Club & Greek

Eighteen MU debaters com­peted at the American Debate Association National Champion­ship last weekend, March 8-10 at the University of Georgia in Ath­ens, GA.

The tournament included ap­proximately 170 debaters from over 20 Universities including Emory University, University of Michigan, Indiana University, University of Minnesota, North­western University, Wake Forest University, George Mason Uni­versity, and Michigan State Uni­versity to name some.

“It’s great for our University and students to compete at the NAtional Championship Tourna­ment,” said Joseph Patten, Ph.D., advisor to the Debate Team and an associate professor of political science. “Our debaters are hard-working, gritty, resilient, and some of the best people I know.”

This year the debate team also competed at tournaments at the West Point Military Academy, New York Univer­sity, Suny-Binghamton, and the New School. MU took first place at the tournament at New York University in November. MU debaters also run the de­bate team at Asbury Park High School and coached the Asbury team through five tournaments affiliated with the Urban De­bate League this year, including a tournament at Harvard last month.

This weekend, MU had nine teams of two students compete at the tournament. In the expe­rienced division, the team of se­nior Gregory Harpe (co-captain) and senior Kaitlin Allsopp (co-captain) and the team of Landon Myers (co-captain) and Alexis Vasquez scored some victories against very tough competition. Monmouth also had seven teams of two compete in the novice di­vision including: Julia Bialy and Maddie Doe; Matthew Gruhler and Jon Suttile; Annie Francis­quini and Chyna Walker; Esther Wellman and Liam Crowley; Michael McGuigan and Michael Scognomillo; Ziah Rowe and William Siefert; and Ryan Co­hen and Christina Balacco. MU debate alum James Hawk and Ryan Kelly helped coach and judge at the tournament.

The topic for this year’s debate was Resolved: The United States Federal Government should sub­stantially increase statutory and/ or judicial restrictions on the executive power of the Presi­dent of the United States in one or more of the following areas: authority to conduct first-use nuclear strikes; congressionally delegated trade power; exit from congressional-executive agree­ments and Article II treaties; ju­dicial deference to all or nearly all federal administrative agency interpretations of statutes and/or regulations; the bulk incidental collection of all or nearly all for­eign intelligence information on United States persons without a warrant.

On the affirmative side of the debate some of the MU teams advocated for a “No First Use” nuclear policy, which is a U.S. pledge to only use nuclear weap­ons in a retaliatory fashion.

Please contact political science professor Joesph Patten, Ph.D. if you are interested in learning more about our debate team. No debate experience is necessary. All you need is an interest in working with fun and interesting people and be fun to travel with on weekend tournaments.